We CAN dance all three!
by LizCarroll2612
Summary: Sherlock has joined John and Mary in their relationship and all in all they are really happy together. I have no idea how they got there, maybe that's a story for another day, but these are some glimpses in the life of the Watson-Holmes-family and how they deal with the outside's reaction to their arrangement.
1. Chapter 1

Notes:

I think Sherlock, John and Mary are great together as they are - John and Mary as a couple and Sherlock as their friend - and I'm sure Sherlock is pretty happy with this situation because he wouldn't be interested in anything else anyway.

But just because something is a little out of character, doesn't mean, that it's not fun to read and write these stories anyway...

My stories are a like public television: they fade out when things get serious...

Story:

Mary had always liked to startle people. To make them uncomfortable without doing anything that she could be blamed for, because it were the people who had a problem with what they had just witnessed and not she who had done something tedious.

They weren't aggressively open about their arrangement, but they didn't keep it a secret either. They acted like other people did around their spouses, just that they sometimes had two of those at their side or - when just two of them went somewhere - the other people often knew, that there was a third person in the picture.

It was very seldom that they had to answer any curious questions or comments, because nobody dared to ask or say something, although of course everybody had heard rumors.

Mary was pretty sure that everybody died to know more and she sometimes was tempted to ask Mycroft to install a bug in the break room of the practice she worked in and John did his locum work, or in Scotland Yard's offices just to hear the speculations that went on there.

She saw the looks when Sherlock sat in the waiting room and waited for John and her to go to lunch together.

She realised how Greg set his eyes nervously to the ceiling when John and Sherlock sat in his office reporting after a night of observations and she came stormed in and dropped a cranky not-yet-dressed kid and a pile of toddler-clothes, diapers and two glasses of puréed pears in Sherlock's lap proclaiming that he had been supposed to be at Baker Street half an hour ago because it was his bloody turn take Rosie to daycare and she had the hell to go to work now. Then she yelled at John, that he could at least have reminded Sherlock, when the two of them could hardly have been too occupied to remember their kid, when they had just been sitting around in a car the whole night. Or had they found enough things to get distracted by even without her? Even though she was angry as a hornet she kissed both her men goodbye and stormed out again.

She realized the sudden silence when she and John consulted with each other what to get Sherlock for christmas while sitting in the break room at work. Mary looked up at all the prying faces that stared at them. "You know, there isn't exactly a social convention about if you are supposed to each get a present for your mutual boyfriend or if we can get him something together", she explained to all of them, since they all seemed to be so damn interested. And suddenly nobody was interested anymore and they all looked somewhere else and desperately searched for a completely different topic to talk about.

John was very angry with her afterwards. "Was that really necessary?" he asked.

"I thought we agreed that we aren't embarrassed about our relationship?" Mary answered. "Or is it relationships?"

"The grammar hardly matters now, don't you think?" John snapped. "I just think, you don't need to rub it in everybody's face."

"I don't rub it in everybody's face. We were having a private conversation and they all were eavesdropping. They had it coming!"

John had basically nothing to add to that.

John honestly wasn't embarrassed about their ménage a trois. They were honest with each other, they loved each other. This wasn't like cheating or having an affaire, so what was there to be embarrassed about? That was how he felt about it for himself and around Mary and Sherlock.

But contrary to Mary he wasn't amused by the reaction of his surroundings. After he had found out about Mary's past, he had to admit that Sherlock was right: even though he hadn't even known about it at that time, her dark history had been what attracted him in the first place. But even though he knew that he liked unconventional people and an unconventional life, he still didn't like that he liked it. And while Sherlock had never tried to appear to be normal and Mary had to act normal in recent years to not attract attention, John wanted at least appear normal to the outside, even if he had accepted that he and the life and people he loved weren't normal at all.

He would love to meet people and present them to his beautiful wife and daughter and go on with the conversation. By now even introducing a male partner lead to smiling nods of approval and not to critical frowns anymore. But introducing both at the same time killed every conversation before it had even started.

Anyway it seemed that he would have to live with that from now on, if he didn't want to hide this part of his life.

Sherlock again had a completely different approach.

Contrary to what he liked people to think, he didn't totally give a shit about what people thought of him. He didn't put much afford into his public image, but if he had a choice he wanted to be thought of as eccentric - which he succeeded with pretty well. That was why he hadn't exactly been offended by the things the papers had written about his - imaginary - sex-life with Janine: that stuff had been quirky enough to emphasise his extravagance reputation. And a relationship with two people at once - let alone one man and one woman - was certainly kinky enough to do the same. As he didn't like and see the point with publicity he didn't deliberately push his private life into the public, but he didn't work on being particularly discreet either. Partly because he didn't get the severity of it. While Mary was very much aware how scandalous all of this was considered by most people and liked to play with their reactions, he knew, that this was pretty unusual but he didn't have a clue just how severely unusual it was.

To him the whole concept of a close and longterm relationship had seemed utterly absurd up to now anyway. Compared to the absurdity of having such a relationship in the first place the question if it included two or three people didn't play such a big roll anymore.

He was aware of course that most other people considered a relationship with one person normal but since he had spend the rest of his life startling people with pointing out his disinterest and the general unnecessity of any romantic relationship, it didn't seem that different to him to now startle people with having one partner too many instead of one too little.


	2. Chapter 2

It was one of the rare Sunday afternoons they all spend together.

Sherlock and John helped Rosie on the slide, while Mary sat on a bench nearby and watched them. John and Sherlock watched smilingly while Rosie rushed down the slide gurgling with laughter. Even though it went on for over a year now, there were still moments where Sherlock still couldn't believe his luck to have become a part of this family. He put his arm around John's waist while they watched Rosie climbing up the slide again.

John realised, that a mother, watching her own child climbing up the ladder right behind Rosie, smiled affirmingly at them. Yes, the younger generation in a city like London was very eager to make gay couples and parents feel welcome. He was really thankful that at least the situations in which he was assumed to belong to that group weren't a problem anymore, but with Mary sitting just a few meters away, John saw danger lurking.

Sherlock picked Rosie up who came running towards them. "Daddy, Daddy...", she called when her eyes landed on John. She held her arms out to him.

"He's been on a seminar for three days last week. She missed him, it's not my fault he has the higher stakes right now" Sherlock explained to the mother beside them, when he passed Rosie on to John's arms.

She nodded friendly. "I always wondered" she finally said genuinely interested. "what does she call you, if he is Daddy?"

"Sherlock!" Sherlock answered. "We thought about alternatives, but we decided that it is important for her identity to know from the start who of the three of us are her biological parents." Yes, Sherlock had done his share of research on what was best for little Rosie considering the unusual family situation she would be growing up with.

'Here we go!', John thought, when the other mother's eyes followed Sherlock's nod towards Mary on the bench when he said "three of us".

John still saw several possibilities of a patchwork family with all previous and current partners getting along unusually well to explain everything the other mother had witnessed up to now.

"But the next one is mine!" Sherlock added smiling proudly and pointing at Mary's belly that started to show first signs of her second pregnancy.

Rose started to squirm herself out of John's arms. "Mommy!" she called and ran towards Mary on her little legs. John saw, that questions were forming in the other mother's head, but that she considered them inappropriate to ask to people she just met on the playground.

"No, she's not our surrogate, then Rose wouldn't call her, Mommy, would she?" Of course Sherlock saw the questions even clearer than John, but contrary to John saw no reason to not answer them, even if they hadn't been vocalised. "She's his wife and my girlfriend." Since the mother had already witnessed Sherlock having his arm put around John there seemed to be no necessity to further clarify their relationship.

John sighed inwardly. If Mary would have said all this he would have gotten angry again, because she would have said it to screw with the other mother and her obviously displayed tolerance towards atypical families. He couldn't really get angry with Sherlock though because he really just wanted to be friendly and answer the questions the other mother had had.

John smiled and nodded friendly back at her before he and Sherlock joined Mary who had started to pack up their things, because Rose started to get cranky and it seemed to be time to go home now.


End file.
